Too Far
by Dairo
Summary: In the world surrounding the Dead or Alive Tournaments, there is only one distance you can go. OC/harem not as fun for him as it might sound , Helena/Christie Kasumi/Hayate, Rachel/Ryu/Sonia, Hitomi/Hayate, Ayane/Kasumi, probably more pairings later.
1. Chapter 1

_Author's Notes: Taking a break from my Claymore fic "The Organization's Gambit" in order to work on this little number. The tradition for DOA stories is for the intro and finisher to have Aerosmith playing in the background, so for this one it's going to be 'Last Child'._

"So Kokoro, do you have the picture?" Megumi, one of her classmates, asked her. She was leaning over the DOA fighter's bento box intently.

"Hmm?" asked Kokoro, lowering her extremely sugared green tea just enough to look over the lunch canister at her. The doll-faced girl loved being near her friends, but when it came to the topic of her new life and everything it came with, they tended to get really pushy.

"Your long-lost big sister's "dog"? Don't tell me you forgot the picture we asked for," Reiko, another classmate, chimed in. It was obvious from her expression that she was really anxious to see it too.

"Oh him," she said, resignedly putting her canister down before rummaging around in her backpack. "I didn't think I could get very good pictures of him by myself, so I asked Hitomi to help me. She told me since I was her friend she would do her best to get 'candid shots' of him." She found the photo album her half-German friend had given her to her classmates so they could look at them.

"Wow! He's cute," Megumi remarked, flipping through the pages as both girls practically drooled over the pictures of the mysterious man as he trained, talked to various people, or worked on something. "But, um…he's looking at the camera in every picture. Aren't 'candid shots' supposed to be ones where the subject doesn't know the camera's there?"

Kokoro nodded as she picked up a pickled radish with her chopsticks. She munched on it for a bit, then swallowed before leaning closer to her classmates and speaking in a hushed tone. "Lisa says her parents designed him to stop assassins. It's impossible to sneak up on or past him, lie to him, or convince him you're someone you're not."

"So how much do you want for the pics?" Reiko asked, trying and failing to subtly pull the album away from Megumi. "How about 3000 for each one?"

"Cheapskate," Megumi teased, yanking back hard. "I'll pay 5000 for each one."

(Jake is right,) Kokoro thought, seeing the scene her classmates were causing attract more attention. The downside to going to an all-girls' school was that if word got around you brought a picture of an attractive boy in, you were waving a piece of meat at a pack of hungry dogs. (Rich girls are crazy.)

As soon as she finished that thought, she noticed that amidst the clamor of girls that were throwing their lot in with the impending riot, higher and higher bids were being shouted over the album that more than twenty hands were on now. Kokoro was starting to wonder if some of them even knew what they were bidding on when all of a sudden a shout interrupted the fight.

"Hey! He's still got all his clothes on! What a rip off!" one of the girls whose hands were on the album yelled angrily. She released the photo book then angrily pushed her way through the crowd.

"Boo…" some of the other girls said, and nearly half the crowd left once they'd heard that disappointing news. That still left more than Kokoro wanted to contend with, but the end lunch bell fixed that. The album was dropped as the other students scampered after their own bags then ran to class. Left to herself, she scooped the pictures up and stuffed them back into her bag before going to class too.

"Ok, I'm going to take my hands off your eyes now Jacques," Helena said coolly, "but you still can't open them until I say so." She stepped away from her longtime personal servant, whom she still was wondering how he managed to survive the destruction of the tritower, then sauntered over to the car she bought him to perch demurely on the driver's side of the hood.

"'Moiselle, I'm still not sure why this surprise had to be revealed to me in a cargo jet flying over-" he sniffed the air, noticing that it had smelled like saltwater for a while now. "-the ocean, of all things."

"Well, open your eyes and see for yourself." Helena said, leaning back on her left hand and stroking her thigh with her right. Her emerald eyes pierced his hazel ones as soon as they opened. As usual, even though she'd lived long enough to know better, she carefully searched his somber gaze for any flicker of joy or enticement. "So, what do you think? Would you make love to me on the hood of this…what do they call it, muscle car?"

Jake carefully scanned the sleek body of his beautiful owner and the powerful lines of the new Camaro SS that she had bought for him.

It was clear that she had gone out of her way to look tempting, apparently taking tips from Christie in the process. She was wearing her silver and black pleather one piece, which had been retailored into a catsuit. Although she didn't need any, her makeup had the appearance of being the result of hours of work by at least four or five people. She was radiant to start, and now she would be heart-stopping for anyone with women as a sexual preference.

It was less readily apparent that the surviving mechanics had already gotten their hands on the car upon which she rested, threatening to blend in with its black racing lines if she laid along them. All of them were aware of his preference for quiet, so the hood hadn't been cut away to allow any blowers to stick out through it. However, it was more than likely that a turbo charger, cold air intake, high energy spark plugs and other such things were under that large piece of plastic. Then again, Jake knew little about this model, let alone what it came with.

He did know, however that if he was a normal human man, he would have been extraordinarily thrilled at the sight of either of the two, let alone both. Knowing this and feeling what he should, though, were two different matters entirely.

"Is that what you want me to do, 'Moiselle?" Jake grimaced inwardly as soon as he finished that sentence. He knew what she really wanted from him. Like anyone who had a tool or toy that could do just about anything, she wanted to fill in the gaps. Halfway through his introspection, he realized that there were some odd panels on the car.

"You know what I want, Jacques!" Helena growled, returning his attention to her. She was angry, as he expected her to be. He had lost count of how many such conversations they'd had, and wondered why his nature always came out to be _his _fault. At least she wasn't blaming herself. That was drama he could do without. "I want you to want me. I want you to look at me with that _hunger_ in your eyes that so many other men get when they l-"

(This should distract her for a moment. Whether she'll continue demanding that I fuck her or switch to beating me is still up in the air.) Jake had interrupted her by pressing his lips against hers. The action could hardly be called a kiss, although that is what it resembled. Over years of doing this to her and having her do it to him, he'd figured out exactly what angle and amount of pressure she preferred to have their lips join at, and when to use his tongue. However, thanks to his defect, there was still no passion, only a desire to please.

And if there was one thing Helena wanted, it was passion. The fact that her favorite toy couldn't give it to her was infuriating. But he always tried, and for the most part was a better person than she deserved the company of, so she invariably returned to him sooner or later. If not, she called him to her.

"You're a failure, Jacques," Helena said after managing to force herself to break the 'kiss'. "Do you understand how much it hurts a woman's self-esteem, when she sees that her company brings you no pleasure?"

She didn't know why she felt it necessary to tell him things like this. She knew full well that when Lisa's parents controlled how his brain developed, they decided that a man that found happiness only in the approval of others would work hardest for that. And Donovan tightened that noose even further by making those 'others' into a permission-based list. As his owner since he was taken out of the vat, Helena was the one who controlled that list. God knew that her misery was the kind that adored company.

"I think you should use it to go pick up Kokoro. She should be released from that awful school her mother sends her to soon," Helena ordered as she slid off the hood. Jake watched her cautiously. There was no telling what she was going to do, especially when she seemed calm. She opened the driver's side door and tossed the key to him. "Get in the car, you're about to be dropped off."

"'Moiselle, we're thirty thousand feet in the air. I don't think this is a good-" his mellow protest was cut short by the daggers she glared at him. Clamping his mouth, he got into the car, and she shut the door and walked to one side of the cargo bay they were in.

"Do not worry about our altitude. In your case, that will not be a factor for much longer," she punctuated this remark by activating the ramp controls and the cargo release.

Jake sighed and started the car, then put it in reverse and released the emergency brake. The subtle purr of the engine was completely overwhelmed by the sound of the air rushing around them as he blazed out into the blue sky below. He swore he saw headlights before the roof of his car dipped below the edge of the ramp. After more seconds than he would have liked, the extra panels on the Camaro tore away and released four massive parachutes, which thankfully deployed both fully and simultaneously.

Helena leaned in the driver's side window of the sleek black Aston Martin that her assassin/handmaid took to replace her silver Jaguar, idly musing over the possible deeper meaning of the two switching vehicle color preferences. Bright silver eyes met her dark emerald ones and she paused in her pondering of her relationship with her two barely human servants, and theirs with each other, to give Christie her order.

"See to it that no one interferes with their time together," Helena told her, the ice of her tone adding its own ring to her melodic voice.

"With great pleasure," Christie purred as she started her luxurious auto's monster engine. Then she felt a harsh grip on the forearm closest to the window, and turned to look at her 'boss'.

"That includes you. If they're not facing a dire threat, I do not want them to see you," Helena added, irritated that Christie was the kind of person that made it necessary to spell this out. Then she said to the passenger, "and I especially don't want you to be seen. Your presence is only a precaution for an extreme emergency. In any other case, you are forbidden from going outside."

Alpha-152, having taken the code name Amiko, blinked her glowing eyes and nodded, cowering away from Helena as she did. The blonde still wasn't sure how Jake brought her back under DOATEC's control, or taught her how to speak for that matter. But she only spoke to him, and for the most part still tried to avoid everyone else except Lisa. Which brought another mystery to mind: no one ever refused Lisa's presence, even if they were normally highly antisocial. Helena stood up and moved to release the Aston Martin as she decided she would have to find out how Lisa did that.

As soon as the British auto was released, its driver shifted into first and gunned it like she was on a drag strip. Amiko was sure they made it to third gear before the rear tires left the ramp, and somehow they cleared it without striking it with the bumper. The clone looked around in a near panic when Christie didn't immediately release the parachutes, ready to teleport if they reached terminal velocity.

"Woohoo! Now this is what I call bloody entertainment!" the assassin crowed as the Aston Martin arced into the cloudy blue void of the sky surrounding them.

The sudden deceleration caused by the parachutes' deployment didn't reduce her excitement. She was in an expensive, powerful car miles above the ground with a beautiful, clearly unwilling woman at her side. Death was still a very real possibility, and there was no replacement for the adrenaline rush. Christie looked over at the subdued, terrified demihuman in the passenger seat and wondered if there was time to rape her before they hit the ground.

"Target vehicle coordinates stabilized," the GPS, apparently voiced by Sean Connery, interrupted her lurid thoughts, as computers were wont to do. Christie turned her attention to the tracker, which showed that Jake had landed on the top floor of a multi-tier parking lot. As she took more direct control of her own vehicle and shifted into neutral to allow a slightly gentler landing, she wondered if he meant to do that.

"Well, mon Ami," Christie started, directing the car to a dead end street just big enough for it, "shall we go watch the kids play together for a while?" She returned her gaze to the clone, wanting to see her reaction to her bastardization of Helena's language. Disappointingly, Amiko said nothing while she intently watched the tracker's representation of Jake's car as he wound his way down the floors at around 80 miles per hour. "Spoilsport."

Christie considered ways to make the latest in the line of Kasumi's clones more fun as she shifted into first, then second again and made her way onto the main streets.


	2. Chapter 2

_Author's Note: Please forgive the hiatus. The last few weeks have been pretty tumultuous. Have some lemonade._

_One Week Ago…_

Ayane was relieved when Hayate changed her orders from hunting Kasumi to pursuit and elimination of all of DOATEC's demihuman experiments, much to her half-sister's surprise. Knowing that Ayane hated her from the depths of her heart, Kasumi confronted her to find out what her estranged sibling was thinking.

"Ayane, I…"

"I mean no disrespect _princess_," as usual, Ayane spat the word with enough venom to kill a large animal, making it contrast sharply with the rest of her words, which were spoken softly. "But I'm trying to brief the hajinmon special operations force on the mission they will be helping me with, and I have no time to speak to you."

Now that, in a sense, their positions were reversed, the difference between the half-sisters' personalities was made clear yet again. When Kasumi was being pursued, she fled at every opportunity and fought only when forced to. Now that she was the one chasing, she found Ayane waiting to shoot Kasumi down every time she took a step after her. And Kasumi honestly couldn't blame her, now that she could observe one of Ayane's tracking methods a little more objectively, since it wasn't directed at her.

A collection of human experiments was a much more vague target than a single, well-known renegade ninja, and their abilities were generally unknown until observed. As expected, the hajinmon chief's room, now owned by Ayane, was covered with maps of various countries with cities pinpointed. Its center was occupied by a massive globe that had those same countries shaded in with some kind of marker.

The map that Kasumi caught her sister putting up was a very detailed overhead of Tokyo with the schools that the two of them attended whenever they had time, plus one other that Kasumi couldn't identify. While she tried to figure it out, Ayane went over to an open-top container full of pin markers and started flicking them at the map. Kasumi almost deflected one she thought was directed at her, but instead let it pass and watched it strike the third school.

"Are these where you believe the projects are?" the redhead asked her younger sibling, who looked at her like she was stupid.

"Reiko," Ayane said, choosing not to dignify Kasumi's question with an answer.

The hajinmon kunoichi appeared, kneeling behind the princess everyone wished didn't exist, and had for so long tried to convince themselves wasn't truly of the royal line. From her current position, Reiko discovered that there was as much to envy from this angle as well. Focusing on why she was summoned, she followed Ayane's eyes to the black marker on the map of Tokyo and immediately winced. She knew the little bitch would be expecting more information on the target, which Reiko's intelligence team didn't have.

"Well?"

Reiko flinched again, making Kasumi wonder if Ayane got violent with her subordinates whenever they gave her bad or insufficient news. It wouldn't be surprising, since the girl had no hope of gaining approval from the clan, especially if she turned out to be a better leader than her and Hayate. When the intelligence officer spoke, her fear was evident in her hesitance.

"That…that experiment was believed to have been lost… in the destruction of the trit-" she started to say, hoping she would hear or think of something in the next five seconds that would save her life.

"I know that!" Ayane said, whirling to face Reiko, who lost her resolve not to cower under her new boss's incinerating glare. Kasumi didn't, though, and the exchange briefly returned her gaze to the board. She was able to identify most of the pins as her own clones from the little alpha symbols on them. But there was a black one that had no symbol on it on the third school, and it represented the mystery that was vexing her little sister.

"F-f-following it-its r-recent return to um… to the… to DOATEC's new CEO, its location has more often than not been in the same building as- as hers, if not in the same room." Reiko said, wishing she could be as untraceable as this mysterious demihuman.

Ayane towered over her, despite being four inches shorter in actual height, with her arms folded across her chest. Believing that she was going to die, she forced herself to continue. "We…we have determined that he is still in her presence. As for the school, its visits to that location are frequent, but not consistent enough to establish a pattern." Reiko raised her arm over her face when Ayane looked like she was going to kick her. "But but but! We have established his pattern for leaving that facility! It ties in reasonably with the watched person's known habits."

Kasumi watched her younger sister's subordinate as Ayane turned away from her, and the woman on the ground looked like she was finally able to breathe. While Reiko described the pattern, Ayane personally traced it onto the Tokyo map, then appeared to space out while she stared at it. Now that her attention was gone, Kasumi moved to comfort her lieutenant. She soon discovered that she'd have better luck trying to soothe a snake.

"Princess," Reiko said as soon as Kasumi's hand closed over her shoulder. Despite being prone, she looked at Kasumi with a generally demure expression that both masked and highlighted a glare that could rival one of Ayane's. "If you'll forgive me, I wish to present Miss Ayane with something more substantial the next time she calls me."

In an instant, Kasumi was holding air, and a handful of leaves were lying over the spot Reiko once occupied. That glare reminded Kasumi that despite Hayate's best efforts at smoothing things over upon his return, she wasn't exactly Miss Popular with her clan mates in the hajin-mon sect. What disturbed her the most was that she didn't know why, and she worried that the slowly expanding rift between the halves of the clan would grow into a civil war.

Ayane seemed to return from her speculation, but Kasumi decided that now was not the time to ask the question that pressed on her heart and mind the most. Instead, she picked one that, while not directly related, was more pertinent to her sibling's present situation.

"Why do you choose to feed their fear of you?" Kasumi asked, and a slight downward twitch at the corner of Ayane's mouth warned her that she was walking on rice paper, but she pressed on anyway. "You shouldn't encourage them to hate you and wish you were gone. You act like you're afraid to let anybody love you."

Ayane's breath hitched, and it was then that Kasumi noticed that there was a purple haze drifting throughout the room. The wall behind the map Ayane had just turned away from cracked, as did the floor under her and the wall immediately behind Kasumi, who chided herself for forgetting that Ayane was not only powerful, but still developing. Her little sister could level city blocks and still had yet to reach her peak.

Kasumi slowly shifted into a defensive stance while Ayane's right hand balled into a deceptively small fist and the fingers on her left curled into loose hooks. It was not hard to predict Ayane's attacks. She made no pretenses about her intent and her telegraphy was clear to anyone whose eyes were quick enough to track her movements. Defending against them was another story. Kasumi knew her sister's style deviated from even the normal hajin-mon style by discarding all defense for even more brutal offensive techniques.

But the rage behind those ruby eyes was too pure to be delivered by anything so hampered by natural laws as a human limb. Ayane seemed to relax briefly before a purple fireball the size of her body slammed Kasumi out through the door. It dissipated on contact, so rather than burning her it just pushed her outside with its impact and left her staring at the sky.

Kasumi immediately braced herself to counterattack Ayane's expected follow-up: the younger girl usually just burst through the wall herself if the hole her opponent's body used or made was too inconvenient. But there was no attack, so Kasumi sprung to her feet and looked at the door pensively, returning to her defensive stance. She was shocked to see Hayate there, pinning Ayane to the doorjamb by her throat. He wasn't choking her, and she was restraining her body's violent instincts to protect herself from retaliating against him.

The redhead was even more confused to see a pair of healers appear on either side of Hayate and start chanting and directing a ki spell at Ayane, whose struggles slowed, then stopped as she fell asleep. Ein let her down gently, and the healers scanned her ki with their own, then looked up at him with grim expressions and one said something quietly. She couldn't make out his response, but they teleported away with her. Kasumi saw her brother heave a sigh, then look around until he spotted her, and in an instant he was at her side.

"What… what's going on, nii-san?" Kasumi asked Hayate with a sincere concern that was starting to become natural for her. She always thought Ayane was a little unstable, but to actually _sedate _her… well that was an indication that there was seriously something wrong.

"I thought it would be enough to tell you not to go near her." He said sadly. Ayane was a fiercely loyal servant and he loved that about her. The last thing he wanted to have happen was to lose her to the madness that had been plaguing their clan ever since DOATEC first got involved with it.

"But why? She didn't seem to have a problem with me on the island…"

"That paradise you and the other women from the tournament went to might as well be another world, as far away as it is from the pain and death of our reality. And from what I've heard, Ayane was using one of her alter egos while there." He went over to the deck in front of the door and sat down, facing away from the hajinmon chief's room. Kasumi followed and sat on his lap. "As much as I hate to say it, it's starting to look like the medical profile Lisa sent to us is accurate."

At this, Kasumi, who had started to lean back against him, jerked upright and half-turned to look into his eyes, fear registering in hers. A medical profile? Lisa worked for DOATEC, so does that mean they have one on Ayane now, too? She started to say anything that came from that organization couldn't possibly be true, but Lisa was an honest person.

"So there's something wrong with her? What is it? Is there something we can do?" Kasumi fired off her questions quickly as confusion and concern faded into dread. As much as Ayane hated her, and as much as Kasumi feared her younger sibling, she couldn't suppress the urges she felt to be near her, much like those she felt for Hayate. Ein silenced Kasumi with a finger to her lips.

"According to Lisa, Ayane's power has exceeded her body's ability to cope with it in circumstances where it is used in any way other than under her extreme control. If her emotions release it, it damages her, and it could someday kill her, and everyone for some distance around her. That's why I gave her a mission she could approach objectively, and generally ordered everybody not to upset her. Kasumi, she's been fueling her ki with her hatred for you for a very long time, and now it's turning against her."

"I didn't mean any harm, I just wanted to know why she didn't want to kill me even though she hated me and was ordered to," she said, slowly relaxing back into Hayate's strength. He wrapped his left arm around her and covered her hand with his.

"That is strange. Ayane's adherence to the clan's laws and her own orders is normally stricter than anyone else can expect to be reasonable. I'll have to look into the laws and see if there is something there that stopped her."

Kasumi was at first surprised that he didn't make a reference to the fact that most people abhorred killing their own flesh and blood, but then realized that Hayate still didn't know Ayane was their sister. Not wanting Hayate to become another point of competition between her and Ayane, and also because she wanted to make her brother feel better, she rubbed her breasts against his chest, silently signaling to him that she was ready to be taken to a quiet spot for another round of lovemaking. Instead of going along with it, he sighed and guided her to her feet.

"There's no time for that now, Kasumi. The tenjinmon are preparing to help rebuild and fireproof the Hayabusa village, and as Ryu's best friend, I need to be there to be sure his clan gets the best support that we can provide them," with that, he vanished, leaving her alone with her burning desire. It didn't help that out of the three of them, Kasumi alone had nothing terribly important to do to get her mind off of the immediate past and the present.

Even though she knew she should stay away from her half-sister, her brother had made himself unavailable and her familial lust demanded to be satiated. In a flurry of sakura petals, she teleported into the healers' building. These at least were hajinmon, so she knew she would encounter less, if any, hostility here. All it took was a believable line of concern for her well-being, and they left her alone with Ayane.

Looking at her unconscious body, Kasumi was reminded of those times on the beach when Ayane dared let the other girls come near her while she was lying down. She looked even more vulnerable now than she did then, when she was toying with the apparently foreign ideas of friendship. Kasumi knelt beside her sister and pulled the blanket away from her nude body. It was then that she felt her own dark tide rising within her, one that she hid from absolutely everybody, but which she had been growing progressively more careless with. She had been watching her sister sleep ever since she could remember, but she only started touching her more recently.

She moved until she was straddling Ayane, with her hands just inches away from her shoulders and their breasts rubbing against each other, causing Kasumi's nipples to quickly grow to almost painful erection. Kasumi knew this was inappropriate, and that if anyone caught her, she'd be chastised. And if Ayane woke up… well in her present condition she'd probably annihilate the whole village. But Kasumi couldn't fight her urges, she could only hope that she could slake them before she went too far.

The dominance of her position over her helpless sister only fueled the flames in Kasumi. She trembled as she tried to fight herself, even as she felt herself leaning down to lick Ayane's cheek and kiss her way to her ear before tugging gently on her earlobe with her lips.

"Don't be afraid little sister… I promise I'll be gentle," she whispered. Ayane neither shivered nor stiffened subconsciously. For all her alertness and caution, the younger girl only slept when it was impossible for her to stay awake, or when she was knocked out by a ki spell, drug, or fight. So on those few occasions when one found Ayane asleep, she was as good as a breathing corpse with a pulse. It was for this reason that Kasumi never feared direct retaliation for her increasingly invasive assaults on Ayane.

Kasumi moved to give her sister a more normal kiss, pressing her soft lips against Ayane's. Then she worked her way down Ayane's neck and to her breasts, which she always grabbed roughly and clawed with her nails as her repressed jealousy revealed itself. The deceptively soft skin resisted her assault: she didn't even manage to draw blood. As expected, there wasn't the slightest hint of a reaction from the unconscious sibling, so Kasumi dropped the orbs she was abusing and watched them quiver and bounce against each other for a bit. She clenched her teeth as she realized that she wanted to grab them again, and distracted herself by moving down.

She traced the faint lines of Ayane's abdominal muscles with her fingertips, then grabbed onto either side of her waist and lapped a straight line from the top of her navel to just under her breasts. This was all more for Kasumi's arousal than the slightest hint of stimulation she might manage to stir from Ayane, even if she was awake and not objecting to this treatment. When Kasumi worked her way back down to her little sister's crotch, the hot throbbing need in her own demanded that she continue. So she slowly moved Ayane's legs apart. The barely visible tuft of lavender pubic hair proved more of an invitation than a deterrent, and Kasumi stroked it gently before letting her fingers slide down to Ayane's labia.

Kasumi stroked the nether lips first, then scowled and licked them when her sister's body refused to respond to this stimulus as well. Then, with some effort, she parted them with the index finger of each hand, curious to see how much Ayane had been used, whether against her will or otherwise. Kasumi wasn't really surprised to find that Ayane's hymen was still intact. After all, she did tend to be pretty frigid, and reacted to anyone who expressed interest in her with hostility.

The dark voice in her mind screamed that she should take it, that she wouldn't feel real satisfaction until her little sister was truly hers. But it had reached the point where it could no longer control her, and she carefully closed Ayane's legs and covered her body again. Kasumi adjusted her clothes and sighed, then stood and left the room, and nodded to the healers on her way out of the building. Her sister's dignity would last another day, and Kasumi could relieve herself with her fingers.

Ayane woke to the sun's fading light and immediately began to assess her situation. It was late morning the last she remembered, and now she was in a ward. She also felt distinctly uncomfortable, on a level that she didn't really understand. Rearranging her blanket into a hooded patient's robe, she slid the door open and looked at the two healers whom she remembered having knocked her out earlier.

"It's still the same day, isn't it?" she asked.

"Yes, Miss Ayane."

"Did anything happen while I was unconscious?"

"Miss Kasumi saw fit to visit you around lunchtime. She was concerned about your health and felt responsible for your condition."

As she heard that, Ayane pieced together the things that she felt were wrong about how she woke up. The smell of sweat and strawberries was faint but seemed like it was much stronger at one point. Her body was damp… in places. It was generally the same feeling of wrongness and, strangely, violation she got whenever she woke up. Ayane pulled the blanket tighter around her body as a disturbing explanation flashed across her mind, but she dismissed the thought as impossible.

"Please don't let her do that again," she said, although she didn't know why. And she hated how there was an inexplicable fear that she couldn't keep from creeping into her words. Before she risked saying anything else, she teleported back into her own room, leaving the blanket and the outfit that they'd taken from her behind.


	3. Chapter 3

Kokoro heard the rumble of the car's powerful engine only shortly before she felt the fighter's presence of Helena's personal bodyguard. The nearly silent thunder rolled around them under the sound of her academy's final bell. Its volume raised quickly, sounding like the low growl of a wild cat warning off something it didn't like. A flash of silver solidified into the blocky frame of a Western-style coupe as it weaved through light traffic of similarly expensive but much quieter vehicles.

She looked around to see that her schoolmates' attention had also been drawn by the noise. This drew a sigh from her, even though this wasn't the first time he had come to pick her up, although the specific car was new. As it slowed to turn into the lot, the car's engine quickly quieted again, but she could still feel its vibrations in her chest. It was such an obnoxious machine, and it made Kokoro wonder why Helena insisted on making Jake drive vehicles whose personality clashed so much with his own.

Kokoro stepped to the spot on the curb she'd developed a habit of standing on whenever she waited for him to pick her up. Twenty seconds passed, which was long enough to make her look in the direction he usually passed from. What she saw was his boxy silver car surrounded by enough black satin to cover it.

(Odd…) she thought as she approached the crowd that her classmates and even some teachers had formed around the car. (I didn't think this many girls were expecting a ride in a Western-style car.) The blare of a horn stopped her in her tracks, and caused the crowd to briefly recede before it surged back around the vehicle.

Fearing that Jake's general distaste for humans might manifest itself violently, she ran up to the outer edge of the crowd and started pushing her way in. The students she shoved fell much further away from her than she'd expected, until she remembered that she'd gotten much stronger since taking up the path of the fighter. Closer to the core of the group, she noticed a familiar face.

"Megumi! What's going on?" She noticed that her friend's chest was more than a little exposed. "Eh? Your blouse!" Kokoro blanched when Megumi stopped trying to get the driver's attention to glare at her, then harshly yank the sides of her top's front back together.

"I guess yours are the only ones that are good enough for him," Megumi growled as she pushed back through the crowd.

Kokoro was trying to think of something to say when she felt five braids of steel cable wrap around her wrist and pull her into the passenger side door that she hadn't seen open. Kasumi yelped as she was taken off her feet and yanked into the seat. Her instinctive reach for something to hold onto caught the door handle and pulled it shut.

"Buckle up," ordered the curt but somehow still gentle voice from her left. Knowing it was Jake confused her, since the last car he was driving had the wheel at the right side. "If they don't get out of my way soon, you're going to have a few less classmates."

He shifted into neutral and floored the accelerator. Kokoro grabbed the door handle again as the Camaro (she read the letters embossed on her airbag) unleashed a dull roar and reared up a little. Its front wheels didn't leave the ground, but it was still enough to scatter the half of the crowd nearest the car's front end. Releasing the gas, Jake tapped a strange button in the front of the center console twice.

Kokoro didn't know the technical term for what the car did in response to that command, but it only enhanced its image of a large cat as it seemed to brace itself for a pounce.

Brake, gas, clutch at 2k rpm, shift to first and the accelerator was slammed to the floor again. Saying the car lurched forward would be discrediting the motion too much even for someone uninterested in racing. It was more of a launch, propelling the beastly machine into action. This worried the passenger even more, though, because the school's driveway separating it from the parking lot wasn't that long.

As it dove forward, Jake felt the front tires leave the ground, so he turned them halfway to the right before they returned to it. Then he released the gas and slammed it and the brake at the same time, while finishing the turn with the wheel. The car's rear end swung in a long, graceful arc around the outer edge of the lot, then when the brake was released and the wheels straightened, it pulled forward normally again.

Kokoro looked at Jake's intense expression as he maneuvered the vehicle out into the streets, discarding anything resembling a traffic law, save maybe driving on the correct side of the road. She saw glowing blue rings surrounding his irises, and at first she didn't know what they meant. As they screamed through traffic that was unmanageable for any law-abiding citizen and inconvenient for those that weren't, she remembered her lessons about dealing with creatures like him.

The phantasmal sensation of the tires below him rolling meeting the asphalt under them was broken by the more visceral one of soft fingers on his right forearm. As his union with the car was broken, he took his eyes off the traffic just long enough to glance directly at Kokoro.

"Is there something you wanted, Hime?" he said gently. He didn't know why, but he always used softer than normal tones with her. Even though she looked delicate, Jake was aware that she was a formidable combatant. However, her mind and heart were what Christie called naïve and Lisa referred to as innocent. Either way, as the girl whom he was charged with protecting, he tried extra hard not to let her get hurt in any way.

"Um, well…" she hesitated, seeing the rings leave his eyes as soon as she touched him. "Lisa told me that you… 'synchronize' with whoever… or whatever you're working with so that you can make a better team… and…"

"And what?" he asked, glancing at her again. It grated him that no matter what he tried, she was still nervous around him. Jake found out the hard way that trying to instill confidence in his skills into Kokoro only made her more afraid.

"Well, um… can you… not… synchronize with…this car?" she managed to force out her question, and she looked at his face again, hoping that if she offended him, she'd at least see some kind of warning.

"If it makes you feel better, Hime, then I won't." he responded, then crossed several lanes to head for the exit that led to the side of the mountain where her home was. She breathed a sigh of relief, but tensed up again when he asked her, "But may I know why you don't want me to?"

At first, Kokoro thought his strange wording was due to his unfamiliarity with Japanese. But after a moment, she realized it was because he was compelled to not only obey absolutely, but to ensure that he didn't inadvertently cause her displeasure again. What a sad life.

"It scares me. The car is a monster, and I don't want to think of you as one, too," she replied. Instead of looking at him this time, she chose to watch the scenery she had nearly memorized pass by outside her window. It was so odd, staring out the right side of a car.

"I'll keep that in mind, Hime," he said calmly as he followed the road without even speeding.

In the silence that passed over the next few minutes, Kokoro tried to figure out how to put words to her thoughts. She was trying to find a way to say what she felt without hurting him, but after she realized that there really were no nice ways, she decided to go with pure honesty and hope for the best. Kokoro took a deep breath.

"Um, Jake…"

"Hime?"

"I… um, I…wish that… you didn't exist." The words turned the saliva in her mouth to ash as they left her lips. She barely felt her seatbelt seize her body's forward momentum as it locked from the car's brakes stopping it almost instantly. Until she came into Helena's world, Kokoro never, ever imagined herself thinking, let alone saying anything so cruel. And that just made her hate everything about her even more.

"Why?" Jake asked, not being the kind of person whose mind tried to suspend disbelief in anything insulting he heard. His world was one of perfect clarity, which apparently was part of his misery. And Kokoro, the silver lining in his overcast life, just confessed her hatred for him. (Damnit, her too? What am I doing wrong?)

"I- I don't hate _you_. You're a wonderful person, really," Kokoro said as she twisted the hem of her skirt. Just as she was about to start worrying about them being stopped in the middle of the road, he let the evil machine roll forward again. "I just hate what you are."

"You hate wonderful people? That's-"

"That's not what I mean!" Kokoro tried to scowl at him, but the expression was too foreign, and she ended up with more of a frustrated pout. "I meant-"

"I know what you meant, Hime. I was trying to lighten the mood."

"But you can't! And that just makes it worse! It's like you've lived without happiness for so long that you don't know anything about it!" she dented the silver panel on her door with the side of her fist.

She saw his right arm tense as though he was going to try to hit or grab something near her. Then she looked back at the panel and flinched away from it when she noticed that some parts of its edges had started to come off.

"What's in there?" she half-demanded. "A weapon?"

"Side air bag," he responded calmly.

With those three words about one innocuous feature the wealthy enjoyed, he told her more about himself and the car than some of Lisa's 'briefings'. Looking around the interior again, it was like someone replaced her eyes. The unusually small windows, which at first she had seen as confining and imperious as tower windows, were now seen as practical for the sort of car it was. If they ever got into an accident (Amida forbid), the amount of glass raining on them would be reduced by half. As for the man himself, well, she had formed most of her feelings about him based on the one or two things she managed to remember him being used for.

(You don't make a person for just a couple- wait, why am I even thinking that? People aren't supposed to be 'made', like toys or tools. They're supposed to be _born_, with a mother and father, maybe a brother or sister… people to love them as they grow up.) Kokoro thought, looking at Jake again. Her logic and feelings were at war with each other and themselves. (But he _was _made, and he didn't have a family, and I was being insensitive about it.)

"Um, Jake…" she started, wanting to apologize, but not sure what to say.

"Hime?"

"Um, I… I'm, uh…I'm sorry, about what I said," she managed to get out. But it was a huge understatement, in her mind. She was sorry she even thought it, and she dearly wished the last ten minutes of conversation never had to happen. If only she wasn't so ignorant of her sister's company and everything they did… then maybe she wouldn't think or say such hurtful things.

"Forgiven and forgotten, Hime."

"But-"

"Kokoro," he interrupted her again, which while rude out of context, was probably one of the nicest things anyone's ever done for her. He reached up and turned the radio on to a local station. "Let's listen to some music. I don't like the mood you're in."

* * *

Hitomi looked up at Mount Fujiyashiyama from its base, taking in the sight of the magnificent, ancient volcano in sincere yet brief awe. Once the sheer wonder of the landmark passed, she stretched and cracked her knuckles. She had a good feeling about this mountain, as though Ein were waiting for her somewhere on it, and all she had to do was give her all and she could see him again.

"Ok, you!" she announced to the island's dignified old core. "Prepare to be climbed!" With her heart lit with the hope of showing Ein just how much stronger she had gotten since they'd last seen each other, she set to the climb with her usual gusto. What set her apart from most people of her character was that she wouldn't be tired even after three hours at the grueling pace she set.

Hitomi crossed several roads on the way up the side of the mountain. Or was it the same one several times? She couldn't tell, but in any case, she wouldn't ask for a ride if she passed a vehicle or accept one if it was offered. To her, it seemed like doing anything without all of her effort was cheating somehow, and she couldn't have that. So off she went, up the mountain, the hard way.


	4. Chapter 4

_AN: I swear, Kasumi junkies are going to OD before this story is over._

_Meanwhile, in the Aoyama District…_

"Oh don't be like that!" Christie told Amiko as she slapped her hand away from the uniform blouse she'd made her put on. "That outfit looks great on you, whether you like it or not.

The blouse covered her about as effectively as a halter top, possibly even less so, since it was made for the average girl her age, who had much smaller breasts. Amiko, having Kasumi's body, was barely squeezed into it with a lot of cleavage visible where the buttonless sides failed to meet, and the bottom halves of her boobs hung out under her it. Christie tied it herself because Amiko couldn't figure out how to close the front.

The skirt was about four inches of pleated plaid that clung to the bottom of her waist and barely covered her perfect, pert little ass. It also showed off thin, tight white panties with every abrupt movement or even the slightest breeze. Against her will, Amiko also accepted having the tips of her hair dyed black. Christie had to admit it did make the girl look a little like a whore.

She crossed "Punk Princess" off her list of looks for the clone, made a note to herself to only make her wear it indoors, and went back into the dressing room to examine herself in the full-body mirror. After a handful of poses, she sighed and forced herself to admit that her look wasn't her style, either.

Christie was wearing a white blouse as well, except hers was buttoned up and fit to her- with not even the smallest fraction of an inch to spare. She wore no underwear, and couldn't if she tried. The outfit, while otherwise slightly more dignified than Amiko's, might as well have been a two-piece leotard with stockings. The smooth, sheer skirt she wore was almost twice as long as her counterpart's, but with a higher propensity for riding up whenever she moved.

She also had on dark-rimmed glasses, and her hair dresser had done her best to pull her short platinum locks into a bun. As much as she loathed to admit Lisa's comment on the subject as being correct, the reality she was facing was pretty damn stubborn. The assassin sighed again as she unbuttoned the blouse.

(So be it then,) she thought (the "Hot Teacher" look _is _harder to pull off than it looks.)

On her way out of the dressing room, now clothed in the similar but much easier to pull off "Soldierette" outfit, she noticed that No. 152, despite visibly hating the outfit she was in, had yet to change.

"You really are too obedient for your own good. Go put something else- Sweet Mary, girl! How did you do that?" Christie asked Amiko, who had, without seeming to move, completely changed back to her original outfit, which looked like the one Kasumi preferred with the colors inverted.

Shaking her head to herself because she knew she wouldn't get an answer, Christie had Amiko pick up all the outfits they'd tried on that day and follow her to the counter.

"Did you find everything you were looking for?" a dimly familiar female voice said from behind the counter.

"Yes. I'd like to buy everything the little slut behind me is holding and a seven in- What the fuck?" Christie blinked, then rubbed her eyes and looked again. "What the bloody hell is going on?" She grabbed the girl behind the counter by her hair and yanked her face closer. "Is that _bitch _fucking with me?"

Amiko, who was behind Christie and trying to manage all the clothes (which had a combined weight of maybe 2 kilos, in her estimation), clutched them tightly and leaned over to try to see what she was freaking out about now. The girl behind the counter, she noticed, looked just like her. Or would, anyway, with about 2 kilos less black eye shadow and without the dozen or so random facial piercings.

"I'm number 69." The counter-girl half-whispered. Then Christie felt something sharp touching her side. Looking down she saw a small blade coated with what she assumed was the carbon composite that was all the rage these days. "I noticed that you claimed an alpha as your own property." The blade pierced the jacket Christie hadn't even bought yet. "That is incorrect. She is the property of DOATEC and must be retur-"

Christie interrupted the clone's sentence by slamming her face into the counter she was running so hard it broke her nose. Then she caught the blade as it fell, flipped her over, and brought the edge to her throat in a single, fluid motion. The sound of small hands clapping drew her attention to her right and- she saw Kasumi's face _again_. If this kept up, Christie felt like _she _was going to start butchering clones just to fight off the paranoia they inspired. She decided to start with this latest arrival, whose expression was irritatingly smug. Christie threw the counter-clone's knife at her. The girl vanished, then laughed, causing the woman to snap her attention to her left side.

"Not bad, Christie," the recently arrived clone teased, holding the knife that was just thrown at her to Amiko's throat with her right hand. "You brought the last one back to us."

As Christie watched, still not certain what to do with this situation (it's not like there was a precedent to go off of), the latest arriver licked Amiko's left cheek and fondled the same breast with her free hand. There was definitely something defective about this model. She had a sick look in her eyes and she seemed to be feeding from Amiko's fear of her.

"Lastborn, what happened to you?" the mystery clone asked Amiko as she continued to grope her. "You were supposed to be our goddess, the ultimate alpha, but you're just a weak little girl."

"Ok, who the hell are you?" Christie demanded, feeling somewhat protective of the latest model, even if Kasumi wasn't Christie's type. "Why are you doing that to Amiko?"

At the sound of the word, the clone hissed and jerked away from Amiko as though shocked. Amiko's expression of relief was interrupted by a rough kick into some of the store's merchandise. Suddenly, Christie found herself practically rubbing crotches with the clone.

"Since you asked, I am Alpha series model 117." A-117 followed Christie as she tried to back away, keeping their bodies pressed close against each other and trying to unbalance the assassin. But Christie had a little more mass and was hardly a pushover. However, she did nearly fall over when the clone was yanked back away from her. 152 twisted 117's arm as she forced her to her knees, then pulled her shoulder out of its socket.

"Moiselle," Amiko's arousing half-whisper, half-sing of Jake's normal title for Helena only emphasized everyone's attention on her. Christie noticed that she was now wearing a headset that apparently connected wirelessly to her cell phone. A sound like a muffled jet turbine filled the air. "Alpha models sixty-nine and one-hundred-seventeen encountered and proven hostile," Amiko noticed 117 trying to rub her ass against her crotch and kicked her prone without releasing her arm. "Permission to terminate?"

The air was tense for a few beats, but Helena's response, although loud enough for all to hear, provided no relief.

"I don't have time for this, Amiko. Ask Lisa," the opera singer's voice was enthralling even in normal speech, yet her dismissal was fairly clear. However, the click in Amiko's ear was followed by a calling tone as the communications techs in the corporation redirected her call straight to Lisa's research lab.

"Dr. Miller here, hello…" Lisa apparently checked the caller ID after she answered the phone, because her lukewarm greeting became outright motherly. "Amiko! How are you? What can I help you with?"

"Christie and I have encountered Alphas 69 and 117, and they're aggressive. Should I terminate them?" Amiko asked, and it occurred to Christie that she had a different overall tone for each person she spoke to. A lullaby-like whisper for Helena, and a voice more demure and full of helpful intent for Lisa. Why did she get only silence?

"Just a sec, dear, let me look them up," Lisa said. Amiko her a rapid tapping sound on the other end of the line, and guessed that the dark lady must be typing something. A minute passed before her response. "Ok, honey, listen close: do _not _kill them, especially number 117. They're part of a group of sixty that have formed a sort of hive mind and we don't know how they'll react to losing one, and Alpha-117 seems to be the queen. Do you understand?"

"No, but I will obey. I will not cause their deaths," Amiko said as coolly as any killing machine while she released 117's arm and stood straight with a hand to the headset's primary side. "Alpha 152 out."

Both Christie and Amiko watched Kasumi's 117th clone force herself to turn over and sit properly. As 117 wrenched her arm back into its proper alignment, Christie found herself momentarily entranced by the stripes all over the clone's legs. When she returned her gaze to her eyes, Christie watched as the pain 117 inflicted on herself seemed to clarify her once muddled thoughts. That made the assassin grit her teeth. While she might have been into a few kinky things, Zen masochism certainly wasn't one of them.

"You… you have a name," 117 said to Amiko, as though in awe. "You have a name that Mistress Helena and Doctor Miller recognize."

Amiko shrugged as though the notion was nothing special, then caught 117 as she lunged at her. Suspending her in the air by her throat, she spoke for the first time to someone who didn't command her.

"I have been ordered not to terminate you. Please discontinue your hosti-" Amiko stopped what she was saying long enough to slap 117's hands away from her breasts with her free hand. "Will you stop doing that? It's unnatural."

Alpha 117 looked first shocked, then honestly hurt at the words that were perfectly understandable to Christie. She lowered her hands to her sides and looked at the ground, and Amiko dropped her. Christie moved to kneel beside the striped clone, but it wasn't comfort she was about to offer her.

"All right, missy. It looks like you're one of the smarter ones. So what's your deal? What do you know about the Alpha Project?"

"More than I ever wanted to know, that's for sure."

"What do you mean? You know your purpose?"

"All three of them." 117 held up three fingers as she said the number, then used her other hand (the one with the recently relocated shoulder) to curl each finger back down as she put words to the purposes. "Initially, we were created as super weapons to accompany Project Theta and to pave the way for Projects Beta, Epsilon, and Omega." At this point, she still only had one finger down.

"Project Theta?" Christie asked, unfamiliar with that one.

"The prototype. Donovan Laboratories' first created human being, from before it was assimilated into DOATEC and given virtually unlimited funding," Alpha-117 said, her tone one of near worship. "Scientifically, he was considered a failure because the result was impossible to repeat. But _I _think they should've been happy to get perfect once."

Christie was starting to piece the clues together until the clone said the result was 'perfect'. Then after a minute, she remembered Lisa saying that all of the Alpha clones after 25, or the last one born before the Epsilon disaster, had fanatical devotion to Jake psychologically implanted to ensure loyalty. After all, he would never dare betray Helena, and with the instilled devotion, the clones wouldn't either. Christie cursed under her breath as she just now remembered a fact she could've used to her advantage much earlier.

"What about your other two purposes?" the assassin asked, almost dreading the answer.

"Oh yes. Second, a dozen or so of us were created to be sex slaves for the development team and/or whoever bid the highest. And finally, those with numbers 80 and higher were created as living research into Kasumi's illness."

"Kasumi has an illness?" Christie asked, wondering why this clone, who had at once been so elusive, suddenly decided to be chatty. She toyed with the idea of it all being a trick or a trap.

"Up here," Alpha 117 tapped the side of her head, again making sure to use the arm that had been twisted.

"Look, incest isn't really that uncommon…" Christie started, thinking that was the only thing that Kasumi showed any signs of that was abnormal by their terms. From what she heard, it was rampant in the U.S. and that was hardly the worst of afflicted countries.

"No, it isn't. But when you couple that with having to kill one member of your family in order to protect the rest, losing your brother for a while, and finding out the person sent to kill you is a half-sister you haven't seen since you were little and well," 117 shrugged. "Kasumi let herself be 'captured' again, between the second and third tournaments. The new genetic R&D team, headed by Dr. Miller, was sympathetic toward her and agreed to use their resources to help her. I'm the result of their attempts to isolate her psychosis, so I pretty much have nothing but the darkness she fights to hide. All of the clones after me are DOATEC's gene therapists' attempts to cure it. And so, here we are. What can I say? DOATEC specializes in fucked up people."

Christie opened her mouth to make a witty response, but was interrupted by an urgent beeping from an electronic device she forgot she was wearing. Looking down at her watch, she tapped the face in frustration while she tried to remember how it worked. The face flipped over, showing a miniature GPS screen with her location and another on it, with a route connecting them.

"It's Jake!" she shouted to Amiko, making all three clones jump to their feet and reminding her the third one even existed. Christie pointed at the one she knew for a fact she had direct authority over. "You. Clothes. Car. Now!"

Amiko scooped up the outfits and teleported out to the Aston Martin halfway through her unspoken comment about Christie's priorities. Rather than being delicate with the fragile clothing (she guessed it was meant to be ripped anyway), she just stuffed it all into the trunk. Amiko almost got pulled off her feet when the assassin decided to stop running and start remote-driving the car to her location, then she slammed the trunk shut and teleported into the passenger seat.

Christie had just barely closed the driver's side door when A-117 tapped on the bullet-proof window. Growling, Christie lowered it so the clone could talk to her, though she doubted she had anything useful to say.

"You're going to help him, right? Let us help," she said, though it was more of an order than a plea. Christie was about to tell her to shove her help somewhere wet and dark when it occurred to her that a small army of ninja clones might be a good thing to have around, if whatever attacked Jake actually threatened him.

"Fine. But hurry up, we haven't got all day." Christie said as she rolled up the window and started driving down the multi-layered parking lot.

As she pulled out into the street, she found her A.M. being followed by the most ridiculous-looking bus she'd ever seen. It was an old city bus, the kind rarely seen in Tokyo these days, with the front end worked over like a muscle car's. If the all-white paint with blood red trim wasn't a dead giveaway as to the identity of its owners, then the tidal wave of cherry blossoms and strawberries running its length was a pretty good hint.

"Well, at least it has 'unique' going for it," the assassin muttered, passing the bus again before the sheer amount of red, white, and pink overloaded her brain and made her forget that she was out to actually protect somebody.

"Thank you," A-117 said from between them, where she was straddling the center console. "That is our home away from the lab. I like to call it our little Hive."

Unable to think of a response, Christie glanced at the clone's striped legs again and grimaced, then focused on driving as fast as possible toward the distress beacon. On the other side of the car, Amiko was pushing herself against the door. Until she encountered this creature, she had believed that Christie was the worst sort of monster to ever walk on two legs. Now, though, this one that had her face was proving to be much worse, and impossible to elude. The mere thought of her made Amiko sick, and she dreaded seeing the original again.


	5. Chapter 5

_Author's Note: NOT THE CAR!_

"Target in sight," Shinji announced, still not sure why they were using the products of the company they were attacking to communicate. Granted, the DOATEC whisper-mics were great for their purposes, but surely using a competitor's brand would be less tacky. He'd been in a near doze, but roused to full alertness when he heard the threatening growl of the car's engine. The enemy's fighter aura helped identify him even before the scout saw the vehicle. "It's in a silver… American-made car. Looks like a Mustang."

"Don't be an idiot," Dai, his partner, said from beside him as the car drew nearer to their position. "See that gold cross-looking thing? That's a Chevrolet logo." He said smugly.

"So?"

"That company starts all of its sports cars' names with C."

"Which makes it a…" Shinji started, irritated that Dai was acting like a know-it-all and dragging out a pointless conversation like this.

"Charger." At this point, the car was near enough for them to get a close look at its front end. "No wait, it's the newest model. And it only has two doors, so it must be a Challenger." Even though Dai was wearing a full head mask like Shinji, the self-pride in his eyes was clear.

Then the car passed them and they could read the back. Though neither of them was fluent in English, they both could make out the letters c-a-m-a-r-o in all caps between the tail lights and they at least had a rough idea of what that sounded like.

"You're an idiot, Dai."

"Both of you shut up. I need to focus in order to use this technique quickly," Ayane said into her own whisper-mic. Then she closed her eyes and started chanting in Ainu with her left hand curled into her right with her right index and middle finger pointed straight up.

"There are two ki signatures in the car, Miss Ayane," Reiko said from beside the super ninja, who had chosen a largest tree she could find that was close enough to the road for her to see most of it. "One of them appears to be Shiba's." Ayane almost lost her concentration at the mention of their codename for Kokoro. "The creature might have taken her as its prisoner, or hostage."

"Then I'm going to have to aim carefully, and try to kill him without hurting her." Ayane said before finishing her chant. Reiko was starting to wonder if Ayane knew how cars worked when she fired her violet ki fire –as a beam this time- and decided that she apparently didn't.

"Miss Ayane! That's an American car!"

"So?" Ayane, now free from her need to concentrate on her technique, snapped her gaze to her intelligence officer, who seemed to have information on the most random things.

"They have the driver and passenger's side switched!" Reiko shouted, flailing, and she looked back at the car. Time seemed to slow as Ayane's beam punched a hole through its passenger side. It was like watching a train wreck, only she felt partly responsible for this, and only the specifics were accidental.

* * *

Kokoro was just starting to get used to the monstrous machine she was riding in. She reasoned to herself that she had partially run away from her serene lifestyle for a little action. After some thought, she realized that one reason this car was designed the way it was is for a different kind of action that some people looked for. She looked at Jake.

"Um, Jake? I think I'm ok now, if you want to go faster," she said, but her curiosity as to whether Jake actually sought the adrenaline rush of reckless driving was distracted by the way he was looking at something not quite on the road. "Jake?"

The demihuman was a semi-stationary blur as he snatched a seatbelt cutter out of his door's pocket and used it to sever first his, then Kokoro's seat belts. He saw the purple light in the distance and recognized it for the threat it was. He yanked her out of the seat right and into his lap before the light annihilated the spot he'd just pulled her from. The metal surrounding the hole started melting away quickly and eventually the whole quarter of the car fell off.

A fraction of a second later, the light struck the street and exploded, causing his Camaro's rear end to flip up over its nose. Before the car had a chance to go over the guard rail and roll down the hill, he rolled them both out through the hole that used to be its front-right quarter, making sure his body cushioned hers from the street. He didn't find it amusing that the door deployed its air bag after it fell off and slid down the street a few dozen yards.

Even though they weren't going that fast to start with, leaving the doomed vehicle the way they did didn't cause them to drop their forward momentum. They bounced off the street and came back down again onto the airbag, which held their weight just long enough to let them roll over the guard rail it had stopped against and continue down the hill. It might have been comical if it wasn't so painful and terrifying. Then again, Jake wouldn't know. He had no sense of humor.

As though losing his grip on Kokoro while they rolled wasn't bad enough, he couldn't stop his body from slamming into the car's wreckage, where it had been temporarily stopped by a small bonsai tree. He only found brief relief when his limited control of their fall resulted in him breaking Kokoro's impact with the chassis. Unfortunately, both of their bodies striking the vehicle's remains were enough to push it the rest of the way over the tree.

Jake clenched a piece of the steel undercarriage with all of his strength, bending the metal under his grip and hoping that it was a piece that wasn't easily torn away. As they continued their unplanned trip down the mountainside, he tried to keep as much of the metal as he could between the landscape and the two of them. But he could see it withering away before him, so he released the debris and tried to slow their descent with his feet, picking Kokoro up as he did.

Focusing on the ground, he didn't notice the brick wall suddenly looming ahead until after the last major chunk of the car slammed a hole through it. Jumping and turning, he brought his body between the wall and Kokoro, hoping he'd pass cleanly through the hole. No such luck though. He winced and grunted as he felt the cinderblock disintegrate against his back and actually cried out when he felt the rebar dig into his flesh and stop at the bones.

The metal didn't stop them either, though, and another fraction of a second later, it sheared and remained stuck in his back as they passed through the wall. In the brief moment before he impacted against the floor of the train station, he rotated again, trading the knowledge that Kokoro would suffer this impact for the intent to avoid driving the rebar through him and into her. The force of their collision with the ground drove her out of his arms again, but this time she stopped rolling. He didn't though, until after he fell off the platform and onto the rails, thankfully face-down.

* * *

Hitomi looked up when she saw a bright flash of purple light way above her on the mountain. By the time she registered it, a loud boom cleared the nearby woods of most of its wildlife. There was a series of smaller booms after it, then another big one. It was dark out, so she thought it might have been lightning and thunder from a coming storm, but then she remembered it was dark because the sun set.

Whatever made all that noise (it was vaguely metallic, which meant there were people involved) was being extremely rude to the animals living in the nearby woods, so she decided to climb faster and make sure to let it know how wrong it was. Putting her plan to meet Ein on a back burner, she climbed the nearest big tree to try to find out where the sound was coming from.

Discovering that it wasn't some mining or landscaping project was a relief that was quickly killed by the notion that it might be an accident. Hitomi saw the fading cloud of dust down part of the mountain above her and smoke pouring out of the side of a building. That must mean that it really _was _an accident. She decided that she needed to help and jumped down onto the road below her and started running up it. Although this way was actually longer, the easier run should make it faster, especially if she managed to hitch a ride from a passing car.

Hitomi hadn't been running for a full minute before she heard a loud, angry engine behind her. Stopping, she turned and flapped her arms at the car approaching her, trying to wave it down. She saw the car and felt the vaguely familiar fighter's presences of the driver and passenger at the same time. That gave her hope, because even though the car looked really snobby fancy, maybe the driver might recognize her and pick her up.

It didn't. In fact, the car didn't slow its unbelievable speed as it swerved just enough to pass her without hurting her. A supped-up red-and-white bus, (Is that normal for Japan?) she wondered halfway through her observation, blazed up shortly after the car and reacted to Hitomi in exactly the same way. Turning as they passed, Hitomi clenched her hands into fists near her hips and stomped her foot.

"Meanies!" she shouted after them, then thought that they must be in such a rush they couldn't stop to pick her up because they knew about the accident. With that, she decided to start running up the road again.

* * *

"That person looked familiar," Amiko said, turning to her left as she tried to keep the flailing hitchhiker in her sight using the passenger-side mirror. She thought if she looked at the girl long enough, she might remember more about her. But then they rounded the hairpin and she couldn't see her any more.

"That was Hitomi," Christie said, concentrating on driving as fast as possible without rolling the Martin on the mountain's obscenely sharp turns. Granted, the classy auto's traction control helped it dive into the curves without slowing below the speed limit, but she was going much faster than was legal. "Even if she was of any use to us, it would hardly be enough to warrant stopping to get her."

"Ok," Amiko said, "I guess we don't want picking her up to be the reason we were too late to save Jake and Kokoro."

(And knowing Hitomi,) Christie thought to herself, (she's probably all sweaty from some stupid adventure she's inflicted on herself and I don't want to ruin the upholstery. Plus she's the nosy-touchy kind of person who would probably end up ruining the clothes I just bought too. I don't see how Lei Fang could find her appealing enough to be willing to share her boyfriend with her.)

* * *

"Hey, was that Hitomi?" Alpha-93 said as the bus passed the blue-eyed brunette. The clones on her side of the bus all turned and leaned toward their windows.

"She's the one that tried to keep Hayate away!" Alpha-121 hissed. "No ride for her."

"Bye-bye Hitomi!" the clones that saw her said in unison, waving at her as they passed. Then they all flinched when they felt the lash of their leader's irritation in the backs of their minds.

"Stop being idiotic!" Alpha-69 said for 117, while she struggled to force the unwieldy bus to keep up with Christie's overpriced pretty deathtrap. "The windows are tinted. She can't see any of you, anyway."


End file.
